Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. People Suffer from Their Thinking
     … Then the question is, how can you best prepare your mind? The best thing you can do is to train the mind to have more mindfulness, more discernment, more alertness, so that if death does come, the mind doesn’t have to suffer. He has you think the same way every morning at sunrise: This may be your last sunrise. Are you ready to … 
  3. Virtue
     … You create an openness and honesty inside the mind. As the Buddha once said, that’s a prerequisite for practicing the Dhamma on any level: that you be honest. So following the precepts creates the right environment for developing the mind further in meditation. It also develops some important skills, such as mindfulness, alertness, and persistence. You have to keep your precepts in mind … 
  4. Noble Right Concentration
     … being aware of the whole body breathing in and breathing out, breathing in a way that gives rise to a sense of rapture or refreshment, breathing in a way that gives rise to a sense of pleasure, breathing in a way that gladdens the mind or concentrates the mind, engaged in mindfulness practice and concentration practice at the same time. After all, the Buddha … 
  5. Things as They’ve Come to Be
     … And in the course of doing that, you learn things both about the breath and about the mind: what kind of sensations the mind likes, what kinds it doesn’t like; how the mind affects the breath, how the breath affects the mind. Right there is a lot of raw material for insight. But in the beginning your purpose is more to settle the … 
  6. The Same but Different, but the Same
     … But the important element is that you first get the mind to settle down; and to get the mind to settle down, you have to find a topic that you find congenial. Some people find simply repeating a word like “buddho” over and over in the mind congenial. Other people find it more congenial to focus on the breath and to make the breath … 
  7. Good Traditions
     … That’s a good quality of the mind. It’s something you can really depend on, because the mind that’s willing to share is a spacious mind. It’s not the narrow, fear-driven mind of someone who’s really stingy. A spacious mind is a much nicer place to stay than a narrow, confined mind. Following the precepts is also a form … 
  8. Joyous Discernment
     … Mindfulness is keeping something in mind. Alertness means noticing what you’re doing while you’re doing it. There are times when mindfulness gets in the way of alertness, which is a sign that it’s wrong mindfulness. You’re focused on one particular thing, and that means you miss something else that you’re doing, something else that’s going on around you … 
  9. Refuge
    In the Pali phrases for taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, the word sarana, which we translate as refuge, can also mean something you remember, something you hold in mind, something you keep in mind. This is part of the way in which it becomes your refuge. You try to keep the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha in mind … 
  10. Study to Practice
     … Mindfulness is keeping something in mind. For instance, when you’re keeping the breath in mind, that’s body in and of itself. You’re ardent, you’re alert, you’re mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. There’s a lot to discuss there. How do you stay with the body in and of itself? How do you stay … 
  11. What You Bring to the Meditation
     … Then, make up your mind that you’re going to stay with the breath. This requires that you bring a couple qualities of mind to this project. One is mindfulness. You have to remember not to wander off. That’s what mindfulness is: keeping in mind fact that this is where you want to stay. Other thoughts will come up, but you have to … 
  12. Calm in the Storm
    We come to a quiet place like this so that we can see our minds clearly. When we’re engaged in a lot of activities and there’s a lot of noise, a lot of disturbance around us, what’s going on in our own minds gets covered up, blotted out. Only when our emotions are really strong, or our thoughts are really necessary … 
  13. The Basic Medicine
     … The breathing is soothing the body, soothing the mind right now, so the mind feels that it can melt in with the breath. The awareness melts into the breath. They become one. However, the meditation is not just a bubble bath for the mind. There’s the healing, comforting, soothing aspect, but remember medicine comes in all sorts of forms. Some of it can … 
  14. Dhammacentric
     … These things are always true, always beneficial, and always should be kept in mind. The question is, when the Buddha talks about right mindfulness, why doesn’t he say that? After all, “mindfulness” means keeping something in mind. Why does he focus instead on keeping in mind the body in and of itself, feelings, mind states, mental qualities in and of themselves, with no … 
  15. The Buddha’s Encouragement
     … You’re here to see what is actually going on in the mind that’s creating suffering, and you’re going to have to learn how to step back from the processes in the mind in order to do that. That requires a good place to stand: this quiet spot in the mind. So, this spot where nothing seems to be happening is really … 
  16. Ready to Evacuate
     … These are the four qualities that support your strength of discernment—the discernment that realizes that wealth doesn’t lie in having lots of things or lots of different minds. Usually, the mind is divided up into lots of different things. There’s this part of the mind holding on to this, and that part of the mind holding onto that. When the mind … 
  17. Training Your Minds
    When you sit down to meditate, you have to figure out what kind of mind you’re training tonight, because you do have many minds. There’s the mind of lust, the mind of anger, the mind of fear, greed, jealousy, the mind that’s tired from the long day, the mind that’s wired and overactive. There are lots of “yous” in there … 
  18. On the Path of the Breath
    On the Path of the Breath February 11, 2008 Once the Buddha was extolling the advantages of breath meditation, the benefits that could be derived from keeping the breath in mind, and one of the monks said, “I already do breath meditation.” So the Buddha asked him, “What kind of breath meditation do you do?” And the monk replied, “I sit breathing, putting away … 
  19. The Open Committee
    The Open Committee March 7, 2005 The mind is like a committee with an open membership. It seems that anybody has the right to say anything at the meetings. No one ever checks credentials to see who’s coming in and with what kinds of intentions. If you sit and watch the thoughts that go through the mind for a while, you begin to … 
  20. Stick with It
     … So as the mind settles down like this, the important skill is learning how to maintain this sense of well-being and to stick with it as consistently as possible. This is where you develop the qualities of mindfulness and alertness. Mindfulness is what reminds you what to do now and also why you’re doing it. It’s not just a matter of … 
  21. Sensitivity & Strength
     … It also involves having an inquisitive state of mind, one that wants to learn new things. And here we have the opportunity to learn about our minds. This is pretty rare in the world. You look at mainstream society: People are all too willing to fill up your mind with all kinds of ideas—that you should think this, should be interested in that … 
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